[tluyben2]

It is common here in Northern EU to see Americans as almost 'crazily optimistic'. Like you say (and this goes especially for the very 'sober' people like the Dutch and scandinavians); the first time you run into Americans in real life it's really jikes. You look SOO good, that's SOOO GREAT what you do etc. I (from Netherlands) got more compliments in one week in the US than I ever did in the Netherlands my whole life (that's probably not true, but I felt like that). So as we are very sober, those compliments are rapidly filtered and then they are not compliments anymore. But on the other hand, I do admire it more than the other side of not getting compliments mostly and I like the optimism much more. I do like well founded criticism but I believe that's different than what my BD colleagues want.

It's interesting to see the differences anyway.

[jernfrost]

Hehehe cool I didn't know you were dutch. I lived in Holland for 3 years. It was eerie how similar I found Dutch to be to Norwegians despite living in countries with very different history and physical appearance. I find that foreigners complain about the exactly same thing about Norwegians as Dutch. Being too direct, blunt, cold etc.

Anyway interesting with the BD colleagues of yours. I am most familiar with Vietnamese. I can't remember anything in particular about their view on criticism. But they preferred very detailed descriptions of what they were supposed to do.